On-Page Report Card, rel canonical
-
My site has the rel canonical tags set up for it. The developers say that it is set up correctly. Looking at the source code myself, it looks (to my untutored eyes) to be set up correctly. However, on the On Page Report Card for every page I have checked, it says that it doesn't point to the right page. I'd really like to change all my 'B's to 'A's, but I simply can't see what the issue is.
-
Thanks Ryan. So apparently it is OK to have relative links, as long as they are done correctly. My developers insist that they HAVE done them correctly, but SEOmoz flags it anyway because for all it knows, the base link may not have been set to the right location. I'm going to see if I can get the URLs changed to absolute.
-
It's in the code so your developer would have to do it, from Google's Guide:
Can the link be relative or absolute?
The rel="canonical" attribute can be used with relative or absolute links, but we recommend using absolute links to minimize potential confusion or difficulties. If your document specifies a base link, any relative links will be relative to that base link.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
-
Hey James,
Not sure exactly how your site is organized but it seems like you should be able to resolve the issue using 301 direction instead of rel canonicals.
Sameer
-
1. I'm not sure how I would do that, so I would have to get the developers to do it.
2. I'm not sure if that would fix the issue
3. While it would be nice to have 'A's showing for the report cards, it isn't really essential if there isn't really a problem - and if this IS what is causing us to get dinged I'm not sure that it is truly a problem on my site, or just a limitation in the 'report card'.
-
Trying making the absolute URL, i.e. "http://www.mysite.com/category/9-Irons" as your href instead of "/category/9-Irons" in the rel="canonical" link tag.
-
Let's say that I sell golfing supplies and have the category "9-Irons". On that category page, the source code would say:
<link rel="canonical" href="[/category/9-Irons](view-source:http://www.breakoutbras.com/category/Nursing-Bras)" /> If I enter the keyword "9 Irons" into SEOmoz, and put the URL as: http://www.mysite.com/category/9-Irons I get dinged for having the wrong canonical reference.
-
Hi James. Lets say you have 15 pages that are the canonical pages and the 35 pages that are variations (alphabetically sorted, price sorted, whatnot). If those non-canonical 35 pages are being graded they're not going to have a rel=canonical that lines up because they're not the canonical page. The on page report card is only looking to match the URL you entered into the SEOmoz system and the tag that you have on your page. Is that what's happening in your situation?
I doubt it, but just in case you missed it, the explanation from On Page Report Card: If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do I prevent duplicate page title errors from being generated by my multiple shop pages?
Our e-commerce shop has numerous pages within the main shop page. Users navigate through the shop via typical pagination. So while there may be 6 pages of products it's all still under the main shop page. Moz keeps flagging my shop pages as having duplicate titles (ie shop page 2). But they're all the same page. Users aren't loading unique pages each time they go to the next page of products and they aren't pages I can edit. I'm not sure how to prevent this issue from popping up on my reports.
Technical SEO | | NiteSkirm0 -
Rel=canonical redirect form sign-up to homepage
hi guys, just an idea- in our product- TrackTest.eu we have couple of authoritative websites linking directly to our Sign-up page. Does it make sense to use rel=canonical on Sign-up page with pointing to the homepage so we will pass some link juice to homepage ? I understand that it is not a use how was canonical designed (it is not duplicated content) and don't want to screw anything. Thanks
Technical SEO | | tracktest.eu0 -
Are image pages considered 'thin' content pages?
I am currently doing a site audit. The total number of pages on the website are around 400... 187 of them are image pages and coming up as 'zero' word count in Screaming Frog report. I needed to know if they will be considered 'thin' content by search engines? Should I include them as an issue? An answer would be most appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
Canonical tag for Home page: with or without / at the end???
Setting up canonical tags for an old site. I really need advice on that darn backslash / at the end of the homepage URL. We have incoming links to the homepage as http://www.mysite.com (without the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/ (with the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/index.html I know that there should be 301 redirects to just one version, but I need to know more about the canonical tags... Which should the canonical tag be??? (without the backslash) or (with the backslash) Thanks for your help! 🙂
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
50,000 pages or a page with parameters
I have a site with about 12k pages on a topic... each of these pages could use another several pages to go into deeper detail about the topic. So, I am wondering, for SEO purposes would it be better to have something like 50,000 new pages for each sub topic or have one page that I would pass parameters to and the page would be built on the fly in code behind. The drawback to the one page with parameters is that the URL would be static but the effort to implement would be minimal. I am also not sure how google would index a single page with parameters. The drawback to the 50k pages model is the dev effort and possibly committed some faux pas by unleashing so many links to my internal pages. I might also have to mix aspx with html because my project can't be that large. Anyone here ever have this sort of choice to make? Is there a third way I am not considering?
Technical SEO | | Banknotes0 -
I know I'm missing pages with my page level 301 re-directs. What can I do?
I am implementing page level re-directs for a large site but I know that I will inevitably miss some pages. Is there an additional safety net root level re-direct that I can use to catch these pages and send them to the homepage?
Technical SEO | | VMLYRDiscoverability0 -
REL Canonical Error
In my crawl diagnostics it showing a Rel=Canonical error on almost every page. I'm using wordpress. Is there a default wordpress problem that would cause this?
Technical SEO | | mmaes0